Princess the bulldog and her friend Cobi have recently started having home visits. She’s always pleased to see us, probably mainly because she knows it means it’s lunchtime!

Thor is 2 today! He’s enjoying his big day with a chicken breakfast, followed by a run around the garden and a tripe-filled bone. And that’s all before 10am!

The weather is quite warm again this week, which has led to a problem where one of our clients did not fully understand our hot weather policy. So I’m making a quick post here to clarify the situation.

In any form of extreme weather, we reserve the right to ammend or curtail a booking if we think it will put either the dog or the walker at risk. This includes hot weather. However we do not cancel bookings due to weather unless we can not physically reach you (e.g. because of deep snow in winter). If the walker deems the weather to be unsafe then they will use their professional judgement what to do. Where a dog is home alone all day we would normally change the walk into a home visit so your pet is still let out, fed if necessary and has some human contact during the day.

If however you want to fully cancel a booking (for whatever reason) then you must give us a full 24 hours notice before the start time. For example, if you have a booking that starts at 2pm on a Tuesday afternoon, you would need to cancel it before 2pm on Monday to receive a refund. Individual walks and visits cancelled with less than 24 hours notice will still be charged at the normal rate. However if the system of 24 hour cancellation is abused and someone continually cancels walks with minimal notice, we may remove their ongoing weekly bookings from our system and ask them to make individual booking with us in the future.

If you would like to cancel a whole week or more of bookings (for example if you are going on holiday) then we need at least 1 full week’s notice so that we can redeploy our team.In these circumstances we will again be happy to give you a full refund.

To cancel a booking, please telephone Andy on 07837 306824 any time. Please DO NOT text or e-mail as these are not always deliverd to us promptly.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns about our booking policy please call us on 07837 306824 any time and we will be happy to help you.

Many thanks,

Andy.

Meet Dave the dog. He’s just started having regular walks with us while his owner is at work. He’s the first bulldog we’ve ever walked and he’s quite a character.

Best paw forward Dave!

It’s been so busy recently we’re a bit late with this post, but it’s finally time to say hello to Digby, who has been having walks with us for the last few weeks.

Liks quite a few of the dogs we walk, Digby is a rescue. He’s now living a happy life with his new owner and having walks with us a few times a month.

Molly and Betsy have started to have occasional walks with us. Andy took them out for the first time last week and they both seemed to enjoy their lunchtime adventure.

See you soon girls!

It is with great sadness that today we heard about the passing of River, one of our longest standing doggy-clients. Together with her friends Becky, Rupert, Bryn and Dotty she has enjoyed home visits with us for many years. She passed away peacfully earlier today. Our thoughts are with her family, both human and animal, at this sad time.

It’s another hot day here on the Derbyshire / Nottinghamshire border. All the dogs who had early walks this morning managed to get their full walks, but as lunch time approaches it’s starting to get too hot for dogs to walk safely.

There are two main problems with dog walking in hot weather. Firstly dogs are furry. I know it sounds obvious, but they can easily overheat. Imagine if you had to wear the same wooly jumper and overcoat you wear in December all summer long.

The second problem is the temperature of the pavements. It may not be obvious to us humans, but hard surfaces, particularly concrete and tarmac really heat up in the sun and it’s very possible our furry friends could burn their paws. Tar is particularly bad because it can start to melt and stick to paws, continuing to burn. That’ why here at Andy Walks we are always very aware of both the air and ground temperature. The solution is that when the weather gets too hot to walk we automatically switch to doing home visits instead. This means your pet still gets a visit and some fresh air, but we don’t walk them down a burning street. Some, like Freddie above, much prefer the idea of chilling out for an hour in a shady corner of the garden.

Nell and her friend Amber have both recently joined us for walks. Amber is quite busy as she helps her owner at work, but Nell has been getting out and enjoying the sunshine, as you can see from the photo above.

Meet Polly the Romanian rescue dog. She now lives near Andy Walks HQ in Bolsover, where she has happily settled into her new life. She’s been having walks with us for the last few weeks now and enjoying the spring sunshine.